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Outlook 2013: Coyne envisions city that embraces arts, uniqueness

Wayne Coyne, the fanciful frontman of The Flaming Lips, is pretty down-to-earth when he focuses on the future of Oklahoma City and what he hopes the biggest changes will be.

BY GENE TRIPLETT •
Published: April 28, 2013

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Ask Wayne Coyne what kind of a place he envisions Oklahoma City to be in 2033, and you might expect him to predict pink robots flooding the job market and travel agencies offering “Christmas on Mars” vacation packages.

Wayne Coyne performs during The Flaming Lips New Year’s Eve Freakout on Dec. 31, 2010, at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. PHOTO BY SARAH PHIPPS, THE OKLAHOMAn archives

But the fanciful frontman of The Flaming Lips is pretty down-to-earth when he focuses on the future of Oklahoma City and what he hopes the biggest changes will be.

“Well, let’s hope that this growth that we’ve seen in this little arts district down here in the Plaza area where I’m at, let’s hope it just sort of keeps growing and takes over, and this little area of Oklahoma City becomes something like an Austin, Texas, started out to be — a bunch of artists who want to live by their own ways and don’t want to get normal jobs and don’t want to move away,” Coyne said. “They want to hunker down here and make it work. I think that’s happening already, but I hope it can keep happening.”

A lot of that change in what is now called the 16th Street Plaza District can be credited to Coyne, who has lived in the adjoining Classen-10-Penn neighborhood — a residential district that has seen its share of blight — since 1992. It’s an area he has actively shown affection for — the neighborhood where he grew up, and returned to as an adult, even after his fun-loving psychedelic-pop band, the Lips, had signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records.

For his presence and influence in the transformation of the Plaza District into the trendy arts and entertainment district that it is today, Coyne was honored with the neighborhood association’s annual Urban Pioneer Award in 2012.

“Now, as far as the rest of the city, I don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that the Thunder has changed about the way people view Oklahoma City, so let’s hope that still keeps happening. But I know in my little area there’s really been a drastic change in the past four years for sure.”

‘One-of-a-kind place’

As for physical changes to the cityscape over the next 20 years, Coyne hopes to see more green among other things.

“In this time as we push into the future, I think people are going to start to become more aware of the old trees that we have around here and the old houses and the old businesses, instead of tearing everything down,” he said. “There’s already been a couple more things torn down in Bricktown, a couple of things along 10th Street.